


Elementary 02: In The Beginning (1852-1874)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary: The Complete Cases of Castiel Novak (and Dean Winchester) [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Northumberland, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4028038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The years before Cas and I met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elementary 02: In The Beginning (1852-1874)

I

I was born an alpha child on January the twenty-fourth in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-two, over three hundred miles away from the greatest city in the world that would play such an important part in my life. My home lay in the village of Belford, Northumberland, close by the Anglo-Scots border. It had once been an important place on the coach road between London and Edinburgh, but when the main London to Edinburgh railway line had been built through the area five years earlier, the coaches had stopped coming and a decline had set in, despite us being given our own railway station which lay close to the house. We were also barely a mile from the North Sea, and often times when I was young, I would walk over to Budle Bay and just sit staring out towards the distant horizon, dreaming of the mythical monsters and other creatures that I imagined lived there. I suppose that I was an odd child in that way.

My father was an alpha called John Winchester, of whom the kindest thing that could have been said was that he was not intentionally a bad man (though I would have cause to revise that opinion in later years). He scraped a living hunting and acting as a guide for shooting parties on the nearby great estates, and sometimes helped out on the fishing boats, but more often than not was down the local tavern, drinking away what little he earned. I was definitely more blessed with my mother Mary Winchester (née Campbell), a wonderful woman from just across the border in Roxburghshire, who struggled to earn money from various jobs to supplement my father's variable income. I may have lacked for material possessions in those early days, but never for her love.

Two years, seven months and twenty-five days into my existence, and the event happened which would shape my life. In London, an alpha named Castiel James Novak was born, the sixth son of Sir Charles and Lady Novak. Yes, Novak as in 'Novak's Perfect Pastries', the business ran by the family of Polish immigrants who had come over during the Napoleonic Wars less than four decades ago and made a fortune from nothing. I would later learn all about them in the society pages I preferred to my study books, in the London papers that the stationmaster kindly passed onto us. Sir Charles had married a Miss Rebecca Rosen, an Irishwoman who had risen from Mr. Novak's first landlady's daughter via his secretary to his wife. 

Castiel's brothers played various roles in our lives, and their statuses was an important factor in that. The two eldest, Michael and Lucifer (twins born in 1848) were both alphas, whilst Raphael (1850), Balthazar (1851) and Gabriel (1853), were kappas, which meant that whilst betas in all important respects, they could not pass on the alpha gene, leaving that to their three brethren (even in those days, the old 'alphas must breed alphas' saying held true for many). Sir Charles had been granted his knighthood some years back for services to Her Majesty's Government, and he and his wife would go on to have one more child the following year, a daughter called Anael who would later become a most valued acquaintance of mine.

My own life changed markedly in eighteen hundred and fifty-six, when my mother gave birth to a second son, a beta. She had wanted to name him after the town in the United States which had recently been destroyed in the civil unrest surrounding slavery (against which her own recently-departed mother Diana Campbell had been an ardent campaigner), but my father insisted that as I myself had been named after Diana, their second son should take as his first name that of my paternal grandfather, so he became Samuel Lawrence Winchester. I could have no idea at the time how those smoking ruins thousands of miles away would one day feature in my life, and to what devastating effect. Despite his only being a beta, my father always showed a marked preference for my little brother, but fortunately I was not the jealous type, and besides, I had my mother.

Cas tells me that his own childhood was quiet and uneventful, except for an incident at the age of six in which he fell out of a tree (inevitably, it had been a dare prompted by his brother Gabriel!). He remembers his father and mother both being very attentive towards him, the exact reasons behind which he would only later discover. He attended a private school near his London home, and although he excelled at most everything he did, he hated it. He also remembers an incident on his eighth birthday when Gabriel and Balthazar made fun of his first ever long-coat, and his mother found out. Rebecca Novak was most definitely not a person to cross; she made the elder Novaks act as Cas' personal servants for a whole month! 

Another factor complicating Cas' upbringing was that Sir Charles' estate, unlike many at the time, was not to go automatically to his eldest alpha but to be split between all his children, including even his daughter, so at least my friend did not have to experience the pressures of being the heir to all that. However, although he had two alpha brothers, Michael Novak grew up to be a most unpleasant personage, whilst Lucifer Novak was always a rebel against being told to do just about anything except by his mother, so there was more pressure on Cas that one might first have thought.

I myself grew up a restless child, and with my mother often having to work, I generally spent more time looking after Sammy than studying. He soon developed the interest in books that I clearly lacked, and it was at the tender age of nine in the year eighteen hundred and sixty-five that he first showed an interest in legal matters, one which was encouraged by my cousin Mr. Christian Campbell, a lawyer based in Edinburgh, who visited occasionally. Sammy and I went to the new school in Bamburgh together from that year, my mother cleaned the teacher's house as the price of our education. My brother enjoyed it far more than I, and indeed far more than any child not yet in double digits should have done. All in all, it was a tolerable childhood by Victorian standards, and I reached the age of fourteen with still little idea as to what I was to do with myself.

To answer one of the most frequently-asked questions that my loyal readers ask me, it was three months before my fifteenth birthday, and with Betty Grimshaw behind the station-house. It was also, to my intense chagrin, supremely unexciting. There were few girls of my age in the village and surrounding area, and only one (already claimed) omega, so my options were limited as it was, but I found my first experiences of sex to be frankly dull. So much so that I took my courage in both hands and approached Doctor Winchelsey, our resident medic, hoping he would be discrete enough not to tell either of my parents. He duly took some samples and sent them off to be analyzed, and a week later, my results came back. 

I was, it seemed, a sigma, a special alpha variant. Doctor Winchesley was kind enough to explain to me (and even kinder not to tell my parents; my father would have flipped!) that this meant I was a fully functioning alpha, but that I would be particularly drawn to other sigmas. Of course alphas often used their scent to mark their territory – the old saying about stinking like an alpha on rut is all too true – but the doctor explained that if I did ever find another sigma (and there were probably only about a handful in the whole of Great Britain – then I would know it by their scent, which would complement mine perfectly. I was a little put out, but at least it explained my lack of excitement over females in general. I think it was this that started my interest in medicine, for I began reading up on human sexuality from then on, and found it, unlike my school books, quite interesting.

Then in eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, my life changed completely in less than a week.

II

Saturday August the fifteenth. 

Our house, as I mentioned, was situated close to the railway station, on the town side. When I went down to the sea, as I had planned to do that morning, I would cross the line at the level-crossing, and sometimes paddle in the small burn that ran alongside the road for some little way. Except on this particular morning I got no further than where road and burn met, for there was something blocking the flow of water that morning. It was a body, laid face down in the water and clearly quite dead.

It was my father.

Looking back, I suppose my lack of reaction was not that surprising. He had been spending even more time drinking of late, with the result that he had been banned from the local tavern some weeks back, since which he had been walking to Bamburgh to drown his sorrows there. Clearly he had taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended his problems there and then. I could not in truth say that I would miss him, although I worried as to how we would cope without his income, such as it had been.

Amidst all the preparations that had to be made, I distinctly remember my mother giving me a telegram and asking me to take it to the post office for immediate dispatch. This was unusual, especially as we were now so financially straitened, and I wondered as I went there as to what it was about. I did not of course dare to open it; my mother had a way of seeing through me which was frankly unsettling, and she would have known immediately. Life was unfair like that.

The funeral took place the following Wednesday, which was a relief, although I could not but stare rather hard at the vicar when he went on for far too long about how my father had been a pillar of the community and would be sorely missed. There was a difference between not speaking ill of the dead and outright lying! My mother, alert as ever, covertly nudged me, and I blushed.

+~+~+

Thursday August the twentieth. 

The day after the funeral, and we had a visitor at our poor excuse for a home. I saw the man arrive from my upstairs window, and decided he looked relatively harmless. He was short, rather untidy-looking but very well-dressed. I wondered if he was a lawyer or some such, but moments later Audrey the maid arrived, and told me to make myself look presentable, then get Sammy and wait on Mother and her guest.

I had my love of the society pages to thank for recognizing the name of our visitor. It was Sir Charles Novak, from London. Though he was as unprepossessing close to as he was at a distance, he turned out to be an amiable man, and explained in quick and simple terms why he was here. Apparently my late maternal grandfather Jameson Campbell, who had died five years back, had bequeathed a substantial sum of money for his grandchildren, namely me and Sammy. I knew (although of course I was not supposed to know) that he had always disliked Father, so it came as no surprise that the terms of the will meant the money came straight to us. There was also a large sum for Mother; in those days such things became the property of the husband as of right, which was why my grandfather had held it back until Father's death. Wisely, I thought, but said nothing.

My mother glared at me. Damnation!

As his business partner and a man he trusted, Sir Charles was the administrator of the estate. I have to say that he was extremely just and fair over the whole business; he and Mother worked out how much she would need, and Sir Charles arranged for a monthly sum to be transferred to the local bank for her. It also meant that I could go to the college in Bamburgh and complete my education. 

+~+~+

Two years passed uneventfully before disaster struck again. My mother was diagnosed with a rare wasting disease, and I had to give up the jobs I had taken on (I did not want to rely totally on our inheritance) to care for her full time. She declined steadily over the next four years, and it was during that period that I more firmly fixed on the idea of a career in medicine, hoping that there would be enough of our inheritance left to pay for it. In those days it took seven years of full-time training at a hospital to achieve the coveted title Doctor of Medicine, or M.D. It was highly fortunate that, early on during this period, I mentioned my wish in a telegram to Sir Charles, who had insisted on regular updates as to how my mother was doing. He at once contacted St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and their teaching college wrote to me with an offer. If I agreed to do a large amount of reading and some essays at home over the next few years and post them to London, these would count towards my degree. I would then do most probably two years full-time and four to five years part-time, during the latter of which I would be able to find employment at a surgery somewhere. It was far better than I could ever have hoped for, and I joyfully accepted.

By the summer of 'Seventy-Four my Mother was fading fast, although I was overjoyed that she survived long enough for Sammy to be accepted onto a Law course at Edinburgh University (I felt fairly sure Sir Charles had used his influence over this). She died in July of that year, and Sammy and I agreed to sell the house so he could move to Edinburgh full-time and I to London. It felt odd that we would be four hundred miles apart for the first time in our lives, but I would cope. 

I hoped.

I was nervous about starting my course full-time (the hospital had written back to me confirming my remaining six years), so I was more than pleased to receive a letter from my old friend Stamford, who was two years younger than me. He had been a considerable help in the early years of my late Mother's illness, but in 'Seventy-Two he had been accepted at Bargate College in Oxford to read Humanities. By a strange coincidence he was lodging with Sir Charles' youngest son – Cas, of course. They invited me to spend the three weeks prior to my starting in London with them, so I could acclimatize myself to city life, and I joyfully accepted. Oxford, I thought, would be quite an experience.

It certainly was!


End file.
